TechfestNW 2013: Drone Attack!

Whatever you’ve heard on the news about Iran or Pakistan, Oregon is ground zero for drones.

Tad
McGeer, a Hood River pacifist and inventor, founded the Columbia Gorge
company, Insitu, that manufactures the ScanEagle spy drones now favored
by the U.S. military. His current company, Aerovel, is developing
long-distance drones for weather reconnaissance. Clackamas’ Aerosight
custom-builds drones for private clients, while Hood River’s Cloud Cap
Technology makes the autopilot and camera systems for just about every
drone on the market. Northwest UAV in McMinnville builds the engines.

Meanwhile, the city of Pendleton is promoting itself as a
military drone test site, which prompted talk in the state legislature
about banning drones from the skies; a new law passed in June will
require warrants for drone surveillance by law agencies. An Oregon
company called Domestic Drone Countermeasures plans to sell black boxes
that would interfere with aerial spies.

But forget money or politics: We prefer spectacle. On
Sunday, Sept. 8, in the OMSI parking lot—as part of TechfestNW—PDXDrones
and tech-company Dialsmith will host an event called the PDXDrones Challenge for anybody who just wants to watch drones go really, really
fast. It’s sort of like radio-controlled helicopter races on steroids,
with 10 drone pilots slated to compete in an obstacle course called the
Drone Cage.

A drone enthusiast group called the Roswell Flight Test
Crew will also be assembling a drone onsite before the competition—in a
single hour. After the high-speed drone war, the pilots will demo the
drones just for funsies.

Don’t expect the drones near MusicFest events, however.
For some reason or another, you aren’t allowed to fly these things over
large groups of people. Which is where all similarity to my
dive-bombing, eyesight-threatening, grade-school RC helicopter pretty
much ends.